Just Saying

I read an article yesterday about a woman who cut out all of the sugar in her family’s life, for one year. (Read her article Here) And I applaud her, but I don’t totally agree. Sugar, along with salt, eggs, butter, wheat, and milk, have been a part of our basic diet for as long as any of us can remember.

Just saying…

According to her and how I interrupt what she is saying is that she cut out everything that has added sugar and she was surprised how many processed foods use added sugar. But what I am wondering is: is it just because she cut out the sugar or is it because they are now eating a healthier diet…A more basic diet.

I’m just saying that if you cut out processed foods, you are cutting out more than just sugar. You are, deleting dyes, preservatives, and other additives that can’t be healthy, right?

To me sugar and honey are a basic food as long as you buy natural or raw and unprocessed.

Too many times dietitians, nutritionists, scientists, and the FDA lump us into certain categories. And they are always changing their minds! First, we are told not to eat real butter and then we are told real butter is better for us than margarine. And what about avocados and potatoes? Now they are saying avocados are a good fat and potatoes are a healthy starch.

You are either a pear or an apple shape. All apple shaped people will have heart disease and all pear shaped people will have thunder thighs. But that’s not true and not the point. The point is; What’s good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander. Just because we all have a heart, lungs, kidneys, a brain, etc. Doesn’t mean we are exactly the same. Each one of us has our own unique chemical makeup. It’s like DNA, there are no two exactly the same.

I’m a carboholic. I love my sugar: cookies, cakes, pies, fudge, etc. And I do check my sugar about once a month because diabetes does run in my family. My mom and brother had it, and one of my sisters has it, but they were or are, all apple shaped and I’m a pear shape like my dad. But I also love fruits and veges. But for me, I can’t handle a lot of meat. Everyone is always saying, eat more protein for energy, but it makes me sleepy and lethargic.

I’m not a dietician or nutritionist, even though I took classes in college. I took in the knowledge that they imparted on us and I drew my own conclusions. And what did I learn? I learned to keep an open mind. That there is no definite right or wrong way, there are just guidelines and sometimes those guidelines can change.

My suggestion: Keep a food diary for a week and write down everything you eat. You don’t have to keep track of calories, just what you ate and basically how much. If you had 3 eggs instead of your normal 2, or you drank 5 cups of coffee instead of 3 pots of coffee 🙂 Just write down what you consumed, but here’s the catch; At the end of the day you have to record how you felt. Did you have more or less energy? Were you excited or stressed? Did you have a headache or did something make you queasy or feel bloated after you ate it?

I liked her idea, but I don’t agree with her method because she cut out all foods with added sugar, foods that also contained other additives. If you want to try cutting something out and seeing how you feel, such as sugar, then cut out the sugar you are adding to your, coffee, cereal, tea, etc.

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6 Comments

In spite of (or maybe because of) having a Chemistry degree, I was blind to the dangers of sugar and refined carbohydrates for most of my adult life. It wasn’t until about four years ago when, fed up with all the contradictory advice about nutrition, I began to take a look at the actual science behind the “don’t eat this and do eat this” statements from government, doctors and the press. It is a pretty shocking story. There is some good science out there, but most of it over the past hundred years, has been pretty bad. A lot of it doesn’t warrant being being called science at all. However, if you start with a clean sheet in terms of what advice is around, then the good science does point to a number of fairly sure things. Amongst these is the fact that sugar is so potentially damaging for your health that everyone should be following the example of the woman being described in your piece. No question. Sucrose (which is the chemical name for the white cystalline stuff we’re all familiar with) breaks down in your gut into glucose and fructose. The glucose goes straight into your bloodstream and travels to your cells where it is converted into energy and by products like water and carbon dioxide. The fructose travels to your liver, where it is metabolized into the chemicals which form “fluffy” or LDL cholesterol, the stuff that clogs up your arteries. Excessive consumption of sugar (which would include the average diet in the US), leads to insulin spikes in your blood as your body deals with the glucose. Meanwhile, the fructose is working away at clogging your arteries and the excess insulin is causing you to lay down layers of fat.
Why are we eating all this crap? One reason is because we’ve been told to drastically reduce our fat consumption. We need to get the energy from somewhere, so our carbohydrate consumption skyrockets. The good science also tells us that most fats are good for us and an essential part of our diet. This includes saturated fats, for decades the baddies in the nutrition story. In fact, there is no reputable study which shows any direct link between the consumption of saturated fats and heart disease. None. It’s a myth, pure and simple.
My advice, for what’s it worth, is to avoid sugar of all kinds. In addition, only eat unrefined carbohydrates which are processed more slowly by the body and so avoid the glucose spike problem. And include a reasonable amount of fat in your diet, especially things like olive oil, eggs, cheese and fat from meat.
Sorry, Karen!

No sorry needed, Like I said I keep an open mind, but I’m still against all the other additives. And another thing I failed to mention about sugar is it destroys collagen. I’m not against fat in the diet either. I do use olive oil, eat cheese, and avocados. And I know there have been many studies, but I still believe a person’s chemical makeup has a part to do with it. My dad just turned 90, no diabetes, no heart disease, no clogged arteries, and he eats sugar, candy, cookies, pies, cakes, etc. on a daily basis, along with real butter and he has a couple of beers a day,

I’m afraid I stand with feet firmly planted on the tide-line where food science is concerned. The sand of opinion (informed or zealous) is constantly shifting and seems therefore to be forever off-balance. I believe it may be like politics, an industry which sustains itself with change and as such we would probably be much better off without it. In other words, I am far more likely to die from stress as I worry about how much bad food I am eating, than to be poisoned by the food itself.

So I don’t worry. And I remind myself that the world population includes millions of hunter-gatherers who sustain themselves to ripe old ages by living on whatever is available at the location and in the season, even if that means a month on berries before they are able to eat the pig at Christmas and go on to fish in the spring. Many survive very adequately on single food diets of very little nutritional value – rice is the easiest example. Which seems to suggest the human body is far more resilient than we give it credit.

The true enemy, therefore, is surely excess. It is rather the quantity of the food we consume than its content, and the unnatural lifestyle (sedentary, pressured, stressed, compelled to ‘succeed’ etc.) that we consume it in. We eat three times our needs, and allow the extra two-thirds lots of opportunity to get up to mischief.

I must add I am a joyful sinner. I love food; love cooking it, giving pleasure to others and using it as a social ‘tool’. And I love eating it. After all, you’ve got to die of something, right?

Hi Frederick. I’m with you on the eating part. My motto is; I love to eat, I like to cook, and I hate to clean up 🙂 But my weight has pretty much stayed consistent. I weigh 4 pounds more now, than I did when I was 12. And yes, moderation is part of it.

There’s really no way to avoid, sugar, in whatever form, and all the other things that are bad for you. Moderation, to me, is the only course to take. Not sure what shape I am but I’m rather like Fred. I’ll be dead before food kills me. I don’t eat much sugar. I like sour and I’m sure there’s something wrong with that. I enjoy your thoughts, Karen